Wednesday, July 23, 2014

A Challenge for Challenge Blogs

I participate and/or manage two group blogs- the Complete Booker Challenge, where I'm a participant, and the Complete Europa Challenge, which I started with a friend (who no longer participates) several years ago. Both blogs have been extremely active in the past- lots of members, frequent posts, etc., but in the past year or so participation in both has dropped off. The new manager of the Booker blog is looking for ideas, and so am I.

I love group blogs because you get lots of points of view and one place to read reviews on a theme. Doing the Europa Challenge has helped me get to know awesome people at a great publisher and has just been a lot of fun. Both blogs have helped motivate me to read great books and share my thoughts and get others' opinions. I love that I have places where folks like to read the same things I do, and we all talk about them together.

But as I said, things have been slow on both. Both blogs have loyal posters but there are an awful lot of tumbleweeds too.

Do you participate in a challenge or multi-reader blog? Do you have any tips or suggestions about how I can re-energize these? Are there any resources out there for leading group blogs?

How do folks run blog challenges these days? I don't really even know what's out there anymore. In the past I've done Irish literature challenges, Jewish literature challenges, World War 2 literature challenges, Pinterest challenges, etcetera. Granted I'm not a big joiner and sometimes I forget what I sign up for. And then my priorities change too. So I understand what happens. But what can I do about it?

1 comment:

I did take part a bit in the Europa Challenge, but focused on 1 press was limiting my reading. Plus the format used, through blogger was really pain. I run a reading challenge myself [http://wordsandpeace.com/2013/12/08/books-on-france-2014-reading-challenge/], and I like many I take part in or saw, I have a mr Linky system, which gives you the flexibility to use whatever blogging platform you want. I use the format used by others, which I found most helpful: to have on the same page 3 series of linkys, one to sign up to the challenge, one to post each review, and one for the recap post at the end of your reading year. the simpler the better, at least for me